AMD not supporting Zen3 on older motherboards :(

[Pickles von Brine]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

It's not a leak, it's a question asked by a reporter to AMD and someone representing AMD answered the question. Unless AMD retract that statement then that is the official answer.

 

Further to that the official slides also show the same information so I don't know why leak terminology is being used.

 

Yes B550 is late, yes AMD were planning to release this information at the release of B550, like they did, however at no point did any official information show B450 or anything else say support for Zen 3. Assuming gets you to here.

 

Could or should have AMD release and press statement a while ago about B550 delays and given this information the same time, yes. But that didn't happen. The thing is AMD just can't give out information that affects their partners and vendors without first engaging with them, nobody here knows when this Zen 3 support information could have been released sooner.

 

But if existing products couldn't fit full AGESA binaries for all current Zen products what on earth makes you think a newer and now even larger one is going to fit? BIOS chips are not a TARDIS, they aren't bigger on the inside. Not a single person outside tech forum circles would have been making these assumptions or even thinking about it, this is a case of having just enough information to be deadly.

 

You don't have to buy anything as it is.

The only thing I will say to this:

Have hope, but don't have expectation. As you said leadeater, assumption got us here. 

 

[mr moose]

6 minutes ago, TheDankKoosh said:

That's an MSI roadmap from when the MAX boards released, Zen 3 was an afterthought as these boards were meant to be cheap alternatives to x570. This has nothing to do with AMD themselves.

Nope, it was from AMD.

https://www.eteknix.com/amd-details-longterm-zen-cpu-roadmap/

 

[MzHellcat]

40 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I’m worse? I personally? Than a gigantic chip manufacturer?  At making chips?  I would hope so.  Am I supposed to be better?
 

I did know that stuff was stored in bios that defined which chips could be used and that it stored a whole bunch of different chips some of them quite old that were no longer even made. How much memory these took each was unknown by me.  I knew that the whole “3000 ready” thin involved making space by removing some of this “dead wood” but which stuff was removed or how much of it was never made clear.  Some bioses on Max boards were actually made larger with the implication that this meant no dead wood had to be removed at all.  So I’m “worse than intel or AMD” huh? I’m worse than a motherboard manufacturer too I hope. 

Mobo manufacturers seemed quite able to swap out one cpu set for another.  There was a worry when ryzen 3000 came out that no motherboards would handle them, then when max appeared only MAX  boards would be able to handle ryzen 3000 but that was quickly shown to be untrue as well.  Bios didn’t hold info for just one chip.  It fit info for MANY different kinds of chips.  Which and how many sets were stored in bios was a vague and amorphous thing to users.  How big these were and how many was not explained.  Just that there were lots and many of them were old no longer even made chips.  Apparently this can still even be done.  4000 series chips could have their microcode inserted at the cost of other different  older chips being removed.  It’s simply that AMD doesn’t want to write it.

First
Haven't you tried any of those B450 MAX mobo? I would say it was the only B450 with no compromise BIOS so far.
Second
Removing Zen and Zen+ based support for Zen 3 support would be implemented if board manufacturer want to. Just like when updating 300 series chipset for Zen 2 support, some won't accept even Zen+ based CPU because new BIOS only include Zen 2 microcode and dropped older Zen CPU/APU support. AMD says A320/300 board won't support Zen 2, yet many people able to boot to their OS with 3600 and A320M mobo after their board manufacturer released BIOS update for it.
Third
Many B450 boards cut their UEFI UI and non-Zen based APU support from their BIOS after adding Zen 2 CPU and Zen+ APU support because of BIOS size limitation. Some B450 that use larger BIOS chip capacity use full BIOS with no support dropped and full UI with features, many X470 doesn't have any problem adding Zen 2 and Zen+ APU support because most of them use larger BIOS chip capacity. It would means those boards that has large enough BIOS would be able to support Zen 3 with some BIOS modification by the board manufacturer.

Don't you remember? We have been in the very same situation before with Zen 2. Board manufacturer would sort things by themself by doing their own way to add support Zen 3. 

Edited May 9, 2020 by MzHellcat

[laurayuan]

Well I don't think they ever said specifically that older chipsets would support new chips. There was some worry back when Zen 2 came out that we wouldn't get old board support as I recall it.

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, huilun02 said:

AMD is so greedy and bad.

 

I'd rather go with Intel because they will actually come and upgrade your BIOS rom chip for free, so that your Intel chipset mobo can support 4+ generations of processors.

So AMD actually market that Gen3 will be available on 2020 AM4 motherboards, people buy them then AMD reneg on that and your response is to be facetious about it and  continue to throw shit at Intel?

 

This forum has hit rock bottom.  

[mr moose]

5 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

Well I dont represent the forum

 

And the people upset can easily find the legalese AMD used, to sue the company for false advertisement

 

Maybe they will,  it will not be the first time AMD have been taken to court for fucking the consumer with poor marketing language.

 

As MSI have already discovered, AMD don't exactly know how to communicate their intentions,  Now MSI are going to have to defend any potential lawsuit from advertising that gen 3 will work on their B450.

 

 

But hey, continue to throw shit at Intel if it really makes you feel better about AMD misgivings.

 

 

[Bombastinator]

 

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

It's not a leak, it's a question asked by a reporter to AMD and someone representing AMD answered the question. Unless AMD retract that statement then that is the official answer.

 

Further to that the official slides also show the same information so I don't know why leak terminology is being used.

 

Yes B550 is late, yes AMD were planning to release this information at the release of B550, like they did, however at no point did any official information show B450 or anything else say support for Zen 3. Assuming gets you to here.

 

Could or should have AMD released a press statement a while ago about B550 delays and given this information the same time, yes. But that didn't happen. The thing is AMD just can't give out information that affects their partners and vendors without first engaging with them, nobody here knows when this Zen 3 support information could have been released sooner.

 

But if existing products couldn't fit full AGESA binaries for all current Zen products what on earth makes you think a newer and now even larger one is going to fit? BIOS chips are not a TARDIS, they aren't bigger on the inside. Not a single person outside tech forum circles would have been making these assumptions or even thinking about it, this is a case of having just enough information to be deadly.

 

You don't have to buy anything as it is.

Re: not a leak

Well it’s not an official announcement either.  If it’s not a leak what would it be called?  Afaik there are official announcements and leaks.  “Unofficial announcement”?
 

re b550

not sure what you mean by that.  

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, MzHellcat said:

First
Haven't you tried any of those B450 MAX mobo? I would say it was the only B450 with no compromise BIOS so far.
Second
Removing Zen and Zen+ based support for Zen 3 support would be implemented if board manufacturer want to. Just like when updating 300 series chipset for Zen 2 support, some won't accept even Zen+ based CPU because new BIOS only include Zen 2 microcode and dropped older Zen CPU/APU support. AMD says A320/300 board won't support Zen 2, yet many people able to boot to their OS with 3600 and A320M mobo after their board manufacturer released BIOS update for it.
Third
Many B450 boards cut their UEFI UI and non-Zen based APU support from their BIOS after adding Zen 2 CPU and Zen+ APU support because of BIOS size limitation. Some B450 that use larger BIOS chip capacity use full BIOS with no support dropped and full UI with features, many X470 doesn't have any problem adding Zen 2 and Zen+ APU support because most of them use larger BIOS chip capacity. It would means those boards that has large enough BIOS would be able to support Zen 3 with some BIOS modification by the board manufacturer.

Don't you remember? We have been in the very same situation before with Zen 2. Board manufacturer would sort things by themself by doing their own way to add support Zen 3. 

Re: 1st.

Yeah.  I said that.  
“Haven’t you Tried any of”?! Implies I’m negligent for not having several b450 boards.  I’m a home user.  How many computers do you think I have?  

re: 2nd.

the stuff I understood that got removed from the non max buses was stuff like old low end athalons not ryzen stuff.  Could be wrong about that.

re: 3rd

so you know that ryzen wasn’t cut. We’re you claiming it was in 2nd?  This is confusing.  Max and non max are turned into “many” and “some” but this seems to be the same stuff as 1 and 2.  The x470 having large enough bioses is interesting.  I haven’t paid much attention to x470.  Might put x470 in th same boat as b450 max boards, or at least some of them.  I don’t know how many companies made max boards.  MSI and at least one other I think I saw.  Could be wrong and max is MSI only. 

re:”don’t you remember” 

I do. 

there was a statement in this thread that board manufacturers weren’t actually prevented from adding support for zen 3 for their boards but that it could be prohibitively difficult with zen3.  I don’t know.  Perhaps the problem is timing.  B550 while not out will be out soon.  Manufacturers won’t be making b450 boards much after b550 comes out and will have little reason to update.  The people who are hosed here are the ones that bought b450 between the when x570 came out and I guess now.  There’s going to be a hole that was apparently already there but not seen by everyone or talked about by it seems anyone who did see between x570 release and b550 release. 

[Blademaster91]

4 hours ago, Ravendarat said:

Ah yes, I missed that slide. Based on that I can certainly understand the frustration. It will be interesting to see when these chips actually hit the market if we get real world clarification on why they wont be able to used on previous boards and if it actually holds true

Yeah I understand why many are frustrated with how AMD handled this, and even more confusing to me is the other side with the "support until 2020". 

I would really like to see AMD be more clear with why previous boards aren't compatible with Zen 3.

4 hours ago, mr moose said:

I have trouble believing AMD didn't know or couldn't work out what was going to be compatible even a year ago. It's not like their engineers were blind sided by the size of their bios's and they had to scramble to make things work.  Their roadmap definitely left consumers with the distinct impression zen3 was going to work on current AM4 boards (after all their promise was platform support til 2020).

I agree and I'm not sure I believe the claims of the bios chip not having enough space to hold microcode for Zen 3, because even a lot of X570 boards have the same 128mbit flash size as X470 & B450 boards.

[mr moose]

3 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

 

I agree and I'm not sure I believe the claims of the bios chip not having enough space to hold microcode for Zen 3, because even a lot of X570 boards have the same 128mbit flash size as X470 & B450 boards.

For me it's mostly just looking at  history,  I gain nothing from assuming it is an artificial problem. I didn't accuse Intel of doing it for sales and I won't accuse AMD of doing it for sales either (that's what happens when we are not biased), but they certainly left the door open and the roadmap sign out long enough after they knew they weren't going to support gen 3 which left a lot of consumers with half the product they paid for.

 

 

To be honest, whether this amounts to anything for individuals really comes down to the individual, I said it a million times in every Intel thread on the subject,  Hardly anyone upgrades their CPU that often that they are financially worse off because of this.  My gripe is with the people who recommended the B450 (and even some still recommending the cheaper B350) thinking it was guaranteed, and the way AMD handled it leaving people to think it was guaranteed.  

 

 

I also have a pet gripe with idiots trying to to deflect from AMD and throw shit at Intel because they don't like the idea that their precious AMD has done what they accused Intel of doing.

[Demonking]

I guess buying the x470 crosshair hero 7 wasn't a good idea with future support for 4000 series in mind

[Bombastinator]

Well at least now we know.  There’s going to be a dip until b550 comes out, but that shouldn’t be long.   I doubt AMD will he badly hurt.  I’d like to see some sort of at least a token gesture by AMD of some sort of bios code for the b450s to be written and leave it up to the board makers as to whether and how to implement it. Puts it on them.  There’s time for that though.  Desktop 4000 won’t be out for a while and what form it takes shouldn’t be predicated in fitting in a b450/x470. The world needs an intel competitor badly.

[MzHellcat]

3 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Re: 1st.

Yeah.  I said that.  
“Haven’t you Tried any of”?! Implies I’m negligent for not having several b450 boards.  I’m a home user.  How many computers do you think I have?  

re: 2nd.

the stuff I understood that got removed from the non max buses was stuff like old low end athalons not ryzen stuff.  Could be wrong about that.

re: 3rd

so you know that ryzen wasn’t cut. We’re you claiming it was in 2nd?  This is confusing.  Max and non max are turned into “many” and “some” but this seems to be the same stuff as 1 and 2.  The x470 having large enough bioses is interesting.  I haven’t paid much attention to x470.  Might put x470 in th same boat as b450 max boards, or at least some of them.  I don’t know how many companies made max boards.  MSI and at least one other I think I saw.  Could be wrong and max is MSI only. 

re:”don’t you remember” 

I do. 

there was a statement in this thread that board manufacturers weren’t actually prevented from adding support for zen 3 for their boards but that it could be prohibitively difficult with zen3.  I don’t know.  Perhaps the problem is timing.  B550 while not out will be out soon.  Manufacturers won’t be making b450 boards much after b550 comes out and will have little reason to update.  The people who are hosed here are the ones that bought b450 between the when x570 came out and I guess now.  There’s going to be a hole that was apparently already there but not seen by everyone or talked about by it seems anyone who did see between x570 release and b550 release. 

Well, I've using B450 Pro VDH, then replaced it for B450 Gaming Plus Max. From what I could tell you, B450 Pro VDH BIOS got UI downgrade from Click BIOS 5 to Lite Version after Zen 2 CPU support. While Gaming Plus Max already support Zen 2 out of the box while retaining Click BIOS 5.

As for X470, I have friend that has X470 Taichi and doesn't got any UI downgrade nor CPU support dropped after Zen 2 support update.

There's an AM4 mobo list spreadsheet that specify BIOS chip size and so far, most of B450 use 16MB chip while only MSI MAX refreshes that use 32MB on B450 board.

[MzHellcat]

2 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

I agree and I'm not sure I believe the claims of the bios chip not having enough space to hold microcode for Zen 3, because even a lot of X570 boards have the same 128mbit flash size as X470 & B450 boards.

From what I've used in the past, MSI had to downgrade their BIOS to lite version and dropped Bulldozer based APU support in order to make it would fit their non MAX B450 boards.

128mbit is 16MByte, typical B450 board BIOS flash size. And those typical B450 board do need cut some corner to be able support Zen 2. And now to make it compatible with Zen 3, board maker would need to cut more corners.

[Bombastinator]

25 minutes ago, MzHellcat said:

From what I've used in the past, MSI had to downgrade their BIOS to lite version and dropped Bulldozer based APU support in order to make it would fit their non MAX B450 boards.

128mbit is 16MByte, typical B450 board BIOS flash size. And those typical B450 board do need cut some corner to be able support Zen 2. And now to make it compatible with Zen 3, board maker would need to cut more corners.

I’ve always disliked the use of megabits as a size measurement.  Implies an attempt At shenanigans.  16mb isn’t very large.  I thought they were larger.  By Quite a bit.  We shall see what we shall see.

[ZuppaSalata]

5 hours ago, fyxsg said:

I hope MSI can fulfill this promise

 

I really want to see if MSI will change that. It would be even worse for them to keep selling MAX mobos knowing that they are making false advertisement

[Dabombinable]

1 minute ago, ZuppaSalata said:

 

I really want to see if MSI will change that. It would be even worse for them to keep selling MAX mobos knowing that they are making false advertisement

It is possible that MSI could have a deal with AMD. The boards do have a legitimate advantage over the majority of B450 in that they have 32MB BIOS chips (which were definitely intended for broader and full support) - hence them not being gimped. That being said, as Linus mentioned it could be a change on AMD's part to avoid confusion.

[Andk1987]

[cj09beira]

15 hours ago, NumLock21 said:

And what board did you pair that Ryzen 1600 with?

 

its a 2600 with a x470 strix board

7 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

They were vague about when exactly they would stop supporting things, which implied notice would be given.  Notice wasn’t given till after the fact.  It still hasn’t.  This isn’t about an announcement it’s about a leak.  None of this matters though.  B550 is still not available. There is a hole.  There also apparently WAS a hole as well.  These two things are being conflated.  Had b550 BEEN available it might have been suggested as an option.  If b550 was available now it COULD be suggested as an option.  B550 ISN’T available. 

its pretty dam official 

https://community.amd.com/community/gaming/blog/2020/05/07/the-exciting-future-of-amd-socket-am4

[Bombastinator]

41 minutes ago, cj09beira said:

its a 2600 with a x470 strix board

its pretty dam official 

https://community.amd.com/community/gaming/blog/2020/05/07/the-exciting-future-of-amd-socket-am4

Which part?  The part that says “May 7th”?

 

read the whole thread.  
 

the data all this is based on apparently came from a direct question. 

[Patrik_]

Its all AMDs fault because they comunicate badly not only customers pay for their mistakes but also MSI is in trouble because of AMD, MSI used "AMDs false statemesnts" into their advertisement, so that means MSi can be sued because of that. 

[thechinchinsong]

7 hours ago, mr moose said:

I also have a pet gripe with idiots trying to to deflect from AMD and throw shit at Intel because they don't like the idea that their precious AMD has done what they accused Intel of doing.

It makes the life of AMD and more reasonable fans of AMD worse. Deflecting from AMD's poor decisions by shifting attention to Intel's poor decisions doesn't make anything better.

[JuztBe]

 

At least with Intel you know that you are screwed. While AMD pats you on the head, and then laughs behind your back.

Got x470 Taichi and 1700x some time ago. Would've been pretty nice to upgrade to 4000 series.

[Taf the Ghost]

3 minutes ago, JuztBe said:

 

At least with Intel you know that you are screwed. While AMD pats you on the head, and then laughs behind your back.

Got x470 Taichi and 1700x some time ago. Would've been pretty nice to upgrade to 4000 series.

People act like Zen2 parts won't be the Best Buy for about 2 years after Zen3 launches, which I find odd. I get the frustration from those that bought a 3600/B450 combo because B550 simply doesn't exist yet, but the whole of the Tech Space has suddenly forgotten the entire Zen2 range exists. The 3900X and 3950X are going to be monster parts for at least several more years.

[NumLock21]

2 hours ago, cj09beira said:

its a 2600 with a x470 strix board

A 3600 would have been better, but with the 2600 at a lower price, that's is not a bad combination.